SAN FRANCISCO - Californians are afraid of the future and cannot
imagine themselves in the great world. To prove it, California Gov. Pete
Wilson recently published an open letter to President Bill Clinton,
urging a constitutional amendment to deny citizenship to the children of
illegal immigrants as well as the repeal of federal mandates requiring
health and education services for illegal immigrants.

On the same day the governor published his letter ("on behalf
of the people of California"), I was at a chic Los Angeles hotel.
All day, I saw Mexicans working, busily working to maintain
California's legendary "quality of life."

The common complaint of California's is that the immigrants,
whether legally or illegally here, are destroying our quality of life.
But there the Mexicans were - hosing down the tiles by the hotel
swimming pool, gardening, everywhere gardening. A woman who could barely
speak English was making beds; at the yuppie restaurant, Mexican men
impersonated Italian chefs.

Who could accuse Wilson of xenophobia? The governor was, after all,
only concerned with those immigrants illegally here. His presumption was
that illegal immigrants are here only for the umbrella of welfare
services. Remove those benefits and they will go back to Mexico, the
governor reasoned.

There was a presumption in Wilson's letter that betrayed
naivete about the desperation of the Third World poor and their wild
ambition for work.

What troubles us about the Mexican immigrant is that she works too
hard. The myth California has advertised to the world is that here is a
place of leisure - the myth of blond beaches and palm trees. In truth,
life in Los Angeles today is no more difficult than life in Chicago or
Atlanta or New York - but that is not the point. Californians expect
life in L.A. to be easier than life back east.

Native-born Californians remember being able to park in Westwood;
they are appalled by the loss of the green hills and having to wait in
line - lines at the grocery store, lines on the Santa Monica freeway.
California, people say, used to be easier.

It is inevitable that the governor of California would
misunderstand, would assume that Mexicans are coming for welfare. In a
state whose most famous industry is entertainment, the desperate Mexican
must puzzle us. Desperate immigrants challenge the sunniest myth we have
about ourselves and this place.

It is embarrassing to watch the Mexican work, like watching a
peasant eat. The Mexican, perhaps most especially the illegal immigrant,
reminds us how hard life is, reminds us that, in much of this world, one
must work or die.

Not only Mexicans are working, of course. There are also
Vietnamese, Koreans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Chinese. Wilson's
letter to the president was only concerned with Mexicans and with
Mexico, but many Californians probably are made more uneasy with the
Asian migration. If, as the governor believes, Mexicans are a burden
because they are poor, Asians are a threat because they are poised to
take over the city.

During the gold rush in the mid-19th century, Chinese miners were
chased off the fields by other prospectors. Mexicans (many of whom
arrived from northern Mexico, bringing with them mining skills) were
also chased away. Now, many generations later, a father of three in
Walnut Creek tells me that Asians are unfair (his daughter has not been
admitted to Berkeley). "Asians are unfair because they work so
hard."

The most modern people I meet in 1993 are alternately those
international businessmen who fly business class and deal with several
currencies, and those peasants who fly tourist class or crawl or float
or walk into the United States. What the migrant worker and the
international business executive understand is the inevitable free flow
of cash and labor around the modern world.

Californians should be thinking of ways to join with Mexico. If we
were as modern, as advanced, as we like to tell our fellow Americans we
are, we would be imagining a global state. Instead, environmentalists
are using the North American Free Trade Agreement as a way of keeping
Mexico at bay, under our control. And Gov. Wilson urges the president to
tie NAFTA to Mexico's policing of its northern border. Clean
yourself, we tell Mexico, clean yourself and then we will embrace you.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein wonders if we shouldn't charge a toll
for entering California from Mexico. And her fellow liberal in the
Senate, Barbara Boxer, wants to enlist the National Guard to protect our
border. But, of course, millons of middle-class Californians assume that
they can use Mexico whenever and however they want. They go to Mexico
for a tan. They go to Mexico to adopt a baby. They retire to Mexico -
get a condo in Cabo. They reach into Mexico for an inexpensive gardener
or nanny.

Despite ourselves and because of the immigrants, California is
becoming a world society - an extraordinary meeting place of Asia and
Latin America with white and black America.

Gov. Wilson, I think, would have done better addressing a letter to
his fellow Californians - rich, middle-class and poor. The governor
might well have asked if, as Californians, we assume too much about our
right to leisure, and the government's obligation to our
well-being.

The truth is that, in time, California will turn the Mexican and
Chinese teenagers into rock stars and surfers. But I think the
immigrants also will change California - their gift to us - reminding us
of what our German and Italian ancestors knew when they came, bopeful,
to the brick tenement blocks of the East Coast. Life is work.

COPYRIGHT 1993 National Catholic Reporter
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